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ANTI-PIRACY : TECHNOLOGY
Relona's anti-piracy system is based on the idea of race conditions. A simplified description of how the system works is given below:
Suppose someone installs a software with a serial number of 12345678. Relona's anti-piracy system on that computer will periodically communicate with a centralized license server over the internet. The communication is infrequent - once in a few weeks, or whenever the user connects to the internet.
During the first communication, the user's computer sends the tuple <12345678 1>. During the second communication with the license server, the user's computer sends the tuple <12345678 2>, and so on. The second number in the tuple always increases with each communication.
In the situation when there is no piracy, the license server first receives a <12345678 1>, and then it receives <12345678 2>, followed by <12345678 3>, and so on. The second number in the tuple always increases.
Now suppose a pirate installs an illegal instance of the software with the same serial number on another computer. The pirate's computer will also send tuples to the license server: <12345678 1>, <12345678 2>, ...
But when there is more than one instance sending tuples, the license server will receive tuples from both instances. These communications will be interleaved with each other. So the license server might receive <12345678 1>, <12345678 2>, <12345678 3>, <12345678 1>, <12345678 4>, <12345678 2>, ... The red tuples are from the first user and the green tuples are from the pirated installation.
Once piracy occurs, the tuples received by the license server are garbled (aka a race condition). The second number in the tuple is no longer a purely increasing sequence. In the example above, the second number in the tuple is a garbled sequence :
1, 2, 3, 1, 4, 2, ...
Once the license server receives a garbled sequence, it knows that piracy has occurred and takes steps to block the use of the software.
Observe that the system detects piracy without computing hardware signatures or collecting user details. Software can be moved from one computer to another. It can be easily transferred from one user to another. But if there are multiple active installations, then this system can detect and block the license violation.
USPTO Patent Granted Sep 2008. |
ANTI-PIRACY